Chapter 22 #2
“After my lovely night with Oliver, I had a craving for eggs. But I didn’t wish to wake the staff, so I attempted to make them myself.” Glancing
around at the mess, he flashed her a crooked grin. “I ran into some hurdles. Peanut?”
His eyes were glassy and bloodshot, his dress shirt untucked and half unbuttoned, and the neat hair she’d conjured for him
stood in every direction. Even more unsettling, there was a guardedness to his gaze as it met hers, a closing of whatever
door had opened between them.
With a tired sigh, she turned toward the staff. “I’m sorry about this. You can return to bed.”
“But the mess!” The footman with water conjury—who, mercifully, had put out the stove fire—was now motioning toward the broken
eggs on the floor.
“Mr. Fontaine will clean it up.”
Her words only stoked their anxiety further. Emmy followed them into the hall, gently dismissing the cluster of staff. When
they were gone, she returned to the kitchen to face Jack.
“He marked you.” Jack nodded toward her neck, his expression strange. “On purpose.”
Emmy wiped at the cursed spot where the love bite had been. She’d tried to heal it, but her conjury was not Papa’s, so she’d
transformed the blemish to match her skin. “It didn’t go well with Oliver?”
“Oh, it went swimmingly. Just like old times.”
“Did you go to the Bronze Door?”
“We played cards there until Oliver lost all the money he had on him. Then, of course, he insisted on taking mine. When that was gone, too, we left, but our night was far from over.” He squeezed a peanut shell in his fist. “Oliver insisted I join him on a raid downtown, where someone had been spotted performing air conjury for tips. On Hester Street.”
Emmy studied his guarded expression. Hester Street ran parallel to Baxter Street, where she’d lived. “What did you do?”
“Precisely what I was told.” He stopped cracking the shell. “I held him down while Oliver conjure-bound him.”
Emmy stilled. She had very little memory of Oliver conjure-binding her in the awful moments between Papa bleeding out and
her being shoved in the back of a carriage. All she could recall was the feeling of hands on her shoulders. And a coldness
spreading over her, much like Grace’s bridging conjury.
“He could have used handcuffs,” Jack grumbled as he resumed trying—and failing—to free the peanut from its shell. “But what
fun would that be?”
“You did what you had to do.” She managed to sound gentle, though it made her sick to her stomach. All the more reason why
they had to get Oliver thrown in jail, where he couldn’t continue to hurt people who broke rules they were never told existed.
Jack let out a humorless laugh. “This is the fundamental difference between you and me: You think, deep down, that I’m good.
Like you. And Jimmy. And maybe even Caleb. But I know myself, Vallillo. And I’m far more like Oliver.”
“Hush.” She whirled, searching underneath the kitchen doors. No shadows of footsteps. “You’re drunk. We’ll talk in the morning.”
She tugged his arm, but he refused to budge from the counter. “You asked me about servants’ bets, but you failed to ask me
how many raids I’ve taken part in. Ask me.”
He was itching for a fight, but she crossed her arms.
“Dozens,” he spat. “I’m the son of a commander, and I did my job well.”
She whirled toward the door again, but no sign of the staff. No sign of Jack relenting any time soon, either, not when he
was hellbent on getting the tongue-lashing he desperately craved.
He wanted her to hate him, just like, in this moment, he hated himself.
Planting her hands on the counter on either side of him, Emmy leaned closer. He froze. Mere inches separated their mouths,
and that reckless part of her nearly closed that distance, like they’d done in the river. “Poor little rich boy.”
His bloodshot eyes blazed. “Excuse me?”
“You want me to write you off as being just like Oliver. Because that’s easier than trying to do better, to be better than him.” She paused, letting him see how much she meant her words. “Do better, Jack.”
It was a risk, whispering his true name so furiously. Even riskier to remain this close to him, when everything in her ached
to be closer. It was maddening, this gravitational pull of his. Maybe she’d smack him over the head, just to satisfy the craving.
“Oliver took me to Grimsbane,” he said roughly. “To bring the charmed man there.”
And there it was, the secret he did not want her to see: the twin pools of pain in those storm-gray eyes. Though hardly a
minute ago, she’d been this close to hitting him, now she had to fight the draw to wrap her arms around him. To comfort him.
Much like her, he had no one else to do it.
“You are here now,” she whispered. “In Mistfield.”
His tired eyes fluttered shut. “I’m so sick of it. Grimsbane. The Society. I want to burn it all down.”
And she wanted nothing more than to see it burn. “Then let’s finish this. Let’s bring them down, clear our names, and end this.”
Jack’s hand found hers and squeezed, his touch searing. They were bonded, whether she liked it or not.
They stayed like that for a few minutes, the quiet interrupted by the morning birds and their chirpy songs. Dawn was coming,
and with it, the staff would return.
“Oliver wants to return to the Bronze Door.” Jack pushed away the hair that had fallen over his forehead. “He didn’t have
a chance to grab his face-changing card yesterday, but maybe he’ll bring it next time.”
“Then I’m going, too.” With only twelve days left, the season was rapidly slipping through their fingers. “And we’re going
to make sure he’s caught.”